Near-close vowel
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Anear-close vowelor anear-high vowelis any in a class ofvowelsound used in some spokenlanguages.The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to aclose vowel,but slightly less constricted.
Other names for a near-close vowel arelowered close vowelandraised close-mid vowel,though the former phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as low asclose-mid(sometimes even lower); likewise, the latter phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as high as close.
Near-close vowels are also sometimes described aslaxvariants of the fully close vowels, though, depending on the language, they may not necessarily bevariantsof close vowels at all.
It is rare for languages to contrast a near-close vowel with a close vowel and aclose-mid vowelbased on height alone. An example of such language isDanish,which contrasts short and long versions of the close front unrounded/i/,near-close front unrounded/e̝/and close-mid front unrounded/e/vowels, though in order to avoid using anyrelative articulationdiacritics, Danish/e̝/and/e/are typically transcribed with phonetically inaccurate symbols/e/and/ɛ/,respectively.[1]This contrast is not present in Conservative Danish, which realizes the latter two vowels as, respectively, close-mid[e]andmid[e̞].[2]
It is even rarer for languages to contrast more than one close/near-close/close-mid triplet. For instance,Sothohas two such triplets: fully front/i–ɪ–e/and fully back/u–ʊ–o/.[3]In the case of this language, the near-close vowels/ɪ,ʊ/tend to be transcribed with the phonetically inaccurate symbols/ɨ,ʉ/,i.e. as if they were closecentral.
It may be somewhat more common for languages to containallophonicvowel triplets that are not contrastive; for instance,Russianhas one such triplet:[4]
- close central rounded[ʉ],an allophone of/u/between soft consonants in stressed syllables;
- near-close central rounded[ʉ̞],an allophone of/u/between soft consonants in unstressed syllables;
- close-mid central rounded[ɵ],an allophone of/o/after soft consonants.
Partial list
[edit]The near-close vowels that have dedicated symbols in theInternational Phonetic Alphabetare:
- near-close near-front unrounded vowel[ɪ]
- near-close near-front compressed vowel[ʏ]
- near-close near-back rounded vowel[ʊ]
TheHandbook of the International Phonetic Associationdefines these vowels asmid-centralized(loweredandcentralized) equivalents of, respectively,[i],[y]and[u],[5]therefore, an alternative transcription of these vowels is[i̽,y̽,u̽]or the more complex[ï̞,ÿ˕,ü̞];however, they are not centralized in all languages - some languages have a fully front variant of[ɪ]and/or a fully back variant of[ʊ];[6]the exact backness of these variants can be transcribed in the IPA with[ɪ̟,ʊ̠],[i̞,u̞]or[e̝,o̝].
There also are near-close vowels that don't have dedicated symbols in the IPA:
- near-close near-front protruded vowel[ʏʷ]
- near-close central unrounded vowel[ɨ̞](ᵻ)
- near-close central compressed vowel[ʏ̈]
- near-close central protruded vowel[ʉ̞](ᵿ)
- near-close near-back unrounded vowel[ɯ̽]or[ɯ̞̈]
- near-close near-back compressed vowel[ʊᵝ]
(IPA letters forrounded vowelsare ambiguous as to whether the rounding is protrusion or compression. However, transcription of the world's languages tends to pattern as above.)
Other near-close vowels can be indicated with diacritics ofrelative articulationapplied to letters for neighboring vowels, such as ⟨ɪ̟⟩, ⟨i̞⟩ or ⟨e̝⟩ for a near-close front unrounded vowel, or ⟨ʊ̠⟩, ⟨u̞⟩ or ⟨o̝⟩ for a near-close back rounded vowel.
References
[edit]- ^Basbøll (2005),pp. 45, 48, 50–52.
- ^Ladefoged & Johnson (2010),p. 227.
- ^Doke & Mofokeng (1974),p.?.
- ^Jones & Ward (1969),pp. 62, 67–68.
- ^International Phonetic Association (1999),p. 13.
- ^• Example languages with a fully front[ɪ̟]:DanishandSotho(Sources:Basbøll (2005:45);Doke & Mofokeng (1974:?)).
• Example languages with a fully back[ʊ̠]:Koreanand Sotho (Sources:Lee (1999:121);Doke & Mofokeng (1974:?)).
Bibliography
[edit]- Basbøll, Hans(2005),The Phonology of Danish,ISBN0-203-97876-5
- Doke, Clement Martyn;Mofokeng, S. Machabe (1974),Textbook of Southern Sotho Grammar(3rd ed.), Cape Town: Longman Southern Africa,ISBN0-582-61700-6
- International Phonetic Association (1999),Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,ISBN0-521-65236-7
- Jones, Daniel; Ward, Dennis (1969),The Phonetics of Russian,Cambridge University Press,ISBN0-521-06736-7
- Ladefoged, Peter;Johnson, Keith (2010),A Course in Phonetics(6th ed.), Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth Publishing,ISBN978-1-4282-3126-9
- Lee, Hyun Bok (1999), "Korean",Handbook of the International Phonetic Association,Cambridge University Press, pp. 120–122,ISBN0-521-63751-1